“Acting Universal in a Broad Sense” and Negativity in Nishida’s The Self-Aware System of Universals

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the significance of the term “acting universal in a broad sense” and the role of “negativity” in Kitaro Nishida’s mid-period philosophy. To achieve this, the paper refers Nishida’s works, The Intelligible World and General Remarks. In The Intelligible World, the formation of “judgmental knowledge” is seen as the “self-determination of the universal,” and reality is discussed by tracing the transitions in the inclusion relationships among the universal. In this context, “self-awareness of the acting self” is considered as a stage of “intelligible universal” and is regarded as an “idea of truth.” Furthermore, Nishida uses the term “noetic determination” to mean the negation of the objectivity of the self, and he establishes the concept of the “wandering self” at its conclusion. However, Nishida expanded the significance of “acting determination” and considered it to define the “noetic determination” of the “intelligible universal” as a whole. As a result, in the General Remarks section, the “intelligible universal” was repositioned as the “acting universal in a narrow sense.” Therefore, this paper reveals the significance of the “wandering self” by focusing on negativity and reveals the transition to the “acting universal in a broad sense” through the “logic of self-awareness.”